“My blessings be upon thee, chéri Master Paul!” she cried.
“Thank you, mother!” said I. “Your love is very dear to me; and for your blessings, I need them all.”
“Come, monsieur,” said Waldron, at the steps.
“A word, a word,” she begged, half of him, half of me, “before thou go in there and these old eyes, perhaps, see thee never again.”
“Grant me one moment, I beg you, monsieur,” said I earnestly to Waldron. “She is a dear old friend and retainer of my family.”
He nodded, and turned half aside in patient indifference.
“Listen,” she whispered, thrusting her face near mine, and talking rapidly, that the guard, who were but clumsy with our French speech, might not understand. “Hast thou the stone safe?”
“Surely,” said I.
“Then here, take this,” she muttered, laying a silken tress of hair in my hand. In the dusk I could not note its colour; but I needed not light to tell me whose it was. My blood ran hot and cold beneath it. The pulse throbbed furiously in my fingers as they closed upon it. “I clipped it under the new moon, the right moon, with my own hand, for thee, Master Paul.”
“Did she know it was for me?” I asked, in a sort of ecstasy.